New Study Says Streaming Music Is Revenue Neutral
Traditional wisdom goes something like this: streaming is killing the music industry because it does not return enough revenue to artists and labels to replace the money lost from falling sales. As is often the case in the digital age, traditional wisdom may be wrong.
Despite the protestations of some pundits such as Taylor Swift, who famously castigated Spotify for harming artists, economists might not necessarily share the same view.
In a new working paper, University of Minnesota economist Joel Waldfogel and Luis Aguiar of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville, Spain, compared countries where Spotify grew rapidly and where it did not.
The data compiled in the study suggests that while Spotify did have a negative impact on revenue digital music sales, it was offset by the reduction in music piracy and payments from Spotify to rightsholders.
However, as the paper notes, "It is not clear that revenue neutrality is an indication of success."
via Celebrity Access
Such “revenue neutrality” is not enough if only maintains the disastrous status quo of obscenely low payments even to quite popular musicians.
Piracy has to be controlled, and then prices set fairly with the streaming services. Without the illegal option, the streaming revenues will increase substantially, and payouts to labels and artists should be negotiated to a higher rate (perhaps a fixed rate).
that means very little for anyone but the top artists. the same people who are the victims of most of the pirating are the same people who are also getting most of the streaming.